In the prior art, a Radio Link Control (RLC) Unacknowledged (UNACK) Mode allows for some packet losses for delay sensitive flows. In RLC Unacknowledged Mode for a Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (4G-LTE) based system where Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) is deployed and a packet loss is detected, the RLC waits for the packet to be recovered by HARQ before trying to reassemble subsequent RLC packets and pass them up to a higher layer. The packet recovery is delegated to the physical layer using HARQ. The physical layer, using HARQ, is able to indicate to the sender that a burst was not successfully received and consequently the sender may retransmit. The retransmission is then combined with the initial transmission before decoding.
The LTE standards of note can be found in the references listed below, all of which are incorporated herein in their entireties by reference.                [1] 3GPP 36.331 Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Radio Resource Control (RRC).        [2] 3GPP 36.322 Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Radio Link Control (RLC).        [3] LTE—The UMTS Long Term Evolution: From Theory to Practice, 2nd Edition.        [4] 3GPP 23.203: “Policy and charging control architecture”.        [5] 3GPP 36.212 Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Multiplexing and channel coding.        
HARQ improves link reliability when a packet is retransmitted. This is especially beneficial for data traffic requiring low rates of packet loss (for example, a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) flow). However, when HARQ is used for a delay sensitive flow, HARQ results in a long end-to-end delay, for example, poor voice quality, jitter or the like. In exemplary embodiments, a data bearer may have a high retransmission Round Trip Time (RTT), for example, a radio data bearer or the like. The high retransmission RTT may be a consequence of bearer media or distances traveled over the bearer, for example, when using a Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), or Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite link, or the like. An acceptable delay may be defined by an application, for example, an acceptable delay may be a different value for voice communications as compared to data communications.